Visa Plans to Launch a Tokenisation Service for Secure Mobile Payments

Visa Europe has announced its plan to launch a Tokenisation service – a secure way to pay with smartphone while keeping user credit card details concealed. The new service will be available for financial institutions from mid-April 2015.

“Working with Visa Europe, financial institutions will be able to respond to this rapidly changing environment, providing their customers with more convenient and secure payment methods in a cost-effective way,” the company wrote in Post.

The Tockenisation service protects customer data, substituting the user credit card information with a series of numbers that can be used to authorize payment without revealing user actual account details.

When consumers use their mobile device to make a contact-less payment, the token is submitted instead of user account information. This step could speed up the arrival of Apple Pay and other new contactless payment services.

The company has also announced a partnership with with Singapore-based fastacash to allow customers to send peer-to-peer payments via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and LinkedIn. Also, the partnership will will enhance Visa Direct’s peer-to-peer domestic and international money transfer service helping to bridge the gap between consumers wanting to use social media to transfer money, and banks and payment service providers.